Gulliver's Travels

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel
Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, commonly
known as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a prose satire by Anglo-
Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human
nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best
known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.
The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a
1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the
nursery." Since then, it has never been out of print.
 Plot summary

Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput

Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib,
and Japan
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
 Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the
time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling,
although it is that love of travel that is his downfall. During his first voyage, Gulliver is
washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less
than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After giving
assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite
of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput. He
is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he must not harm
their subjects. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours, the Blefuscudians,
by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a
province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason for,
among other crimes, "making water" (urination) in the capital, though he was putting out a
fire and saving countless lives. He is convicted and sentenced to be blinded, but with the
assistance of a kind friend, he escapes to Blefuscu. Here he spots and retrieves an
abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship, which safely takes him back
home. This book of the Travels is a topical political satire.
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
Part II: A Voyage to
Brobdingnag
When the sailing ship Adventure is blown off course by storms and forced to sail for
land in search of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by
a farmer who is 72 feet (22 m) tall (the scale of Brobdingnag is about 12:1, compared
to Lilliput's 1:12, judging from Gulliver estimating a man's step being 10 yards
(9.1 m)). He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer
treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. After a while the constant
shows make Lemuel sick, and the farmer sells him to the queen of the realm. The
farmer's daughter (who accompanied her father while exhibiting Gulliver) is taken
into the queen's service to take care of the tiny man. Since Gulliver is too small to
use their huge chairs, beds, knives and forks, the queen commissions a small house
to be built for him so that he can be carried around in it; this is referred to as his
'travelling box'. Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being
carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King.
Part II: A Voyage to
Brobdingnag
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
After Gulliver's ship was attacked by pirates, he is marooned close to a desolate rocky
island near India. Fortunately, he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom
devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical
ends. Laputa's custom of throwing rocks down at rebellious cities on the ground seems
the first time that the air strike was conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver
tours Balnibarbi, the kingdom ruled from Laputa, as the guest of a low-ranking courtier
and sees the ruin brought about by the blind pursuit of science without practical results,
in a satire on bureaucracy and on the Royal Society and its experiments. At the Grand
Academy of Lagado, great resources and manpower are employed on researching
completely preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers,
softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering
political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons
(see muckraking). Gulliver is then taken to Maldonada, the main port, to await a trader
who can take him on to Japan. While waiting for a passage, Gulliver takes a short side-
trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, where he visits a magician's dwelling and discusses
history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the
"ancients versus moderns" theme in the book.
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa,
Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms

Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to the sea as the captain
of a merchantman as he is bored with his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is
forced to find new additions to his crew, whom he believes to have turned the rest of the
crew against him. His crew then mutiny, and after keeping him contained for some time
resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue as pirates. He
is abandoned in a landing boat and comes upon a race of hideous, deformed and savage
humanoid creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly afterwards he meets
the Houyhnhnms, a race of talking horses. They are the rulers, while the deformed
creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form. Gulliver becomes a member of
a horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their
lifestyle, rejecting his fellow humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of
reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However,
an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of
reason, is a danger to their civilisation, and expels him.
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country
of the Houyhnhnms